


Sins of the Father

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Looking Toward [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Family, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9446198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: "They are halfway between the Foggy Swamp and Gaoling, where the Avatar is convinced that he will find a Earthbending teacher, and Zuko thinks that the Water Tribe boy, Sokka, is finally starting to trust them.Until, that is, Uncle feels a need to break the silence and make small talk."The past has a nasty habit of catching up with them.Sequel toLooking and its ConsequencesandDon't Look Back Lest You Turn to Salt





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my earlier works Looking and its Consequences and Don't Look Back Lest You Turn to Salt, though this should be able to be more-or-less understood on its own.
> 
> The premise of this AU is that, rather than staying in his seat and looking away during Zuko's Agni Kai with Ozai, Iroh interferes and stops it. In Looking and its Consequences, we learn that he is branded a traitor because of that decision, and Zuko, having a hard time accepting the consequences of that, convinces Iroh to flee the Fire Nation with him. In Don't Look Back, Lest You Turn to Salt, we find thad that they go to Omashu, and stay there for several years, until the Fire Nation moves to capture it. They flee, and Bumi puts them in touch with the Gaang so that they can teach Aang Firebending.

They are halfway between the Foggy Swamp and Gaoling, where the Avatar is convinced that he will find a Earthbending teacher, and Zuko thinks that the Water Tribe boy, Sokka, is finally starting to trust them. 

Until, that is, Uncle feels a need to break the silence and make small talk.

“You know,” he says, stretching and yawning from his spot on the bison. “I have heard Gaoling is beautiful. I have always wanted to go there, but it was not a strategic priority, when we were marching toward Ba Sing Se—”

Sokka’s eyebrows crease, his eyes narrow. “What do you mean, when you were marching toward Ba Sing Se?”

And the worst part, thinks Zuko, is that if Uncle realizes he’s made a mistake, if he regrets it, he shows no indication, makes no attempt to remedy the situation that he’s about to get them into. “In another life,” he says nonchalantly, “I was a general in the Fire Nation Army. I commanded a siege of Ba Sing Se that lasted—”

“Six hundred days! Yeah, my dad mentioned it a few times!” shouts Sokka springing to his feet.

“Sokka, sit down!” insists his sister, Katara. “It’s not safe, you’re going to fall off App—”

“Not _safe?_ You want to talk about _not safe_?” responds Sokka. “How about traveling with two members of the Fire Nation royal family!”

“The royal family?” echoes Katara, looking at Zuko and his uncle with something like skepticism, and even _betrayal_ for the first time. While Sokka, who fancied himself a military strategist was suspicious, and the Avatar was hesitant—something less to do with them, and more to do with a fear of learning Firebending at all—Katara was trusting, welcomed them to the group with something like enthusiasm. “That’s not...true, is it?” she continues. 

Uncle takes a breath as if to respond, but Zuko interrupts: “No! My uncle’s confused! The visions in the swamp, you know…”

“Zuko…” Uncle looks at him with something like pity in his eyes, and there is a hot rage, a fire, building up in Zuko’s gut. 

“No, Uncle!”

“Okay!” shouts the Avatar, from the front of the bison, his back turned to the rest of them. “Clearly, we all have some stuff to talk about. But I don’t think Appa’s back is the best place to do it! Everyone just sit down until we land, okay?”

* * *

“So,” Sokka says, after they’ve all landed in an empty field at the foot of the mountains and disembarked from the bison’s back. “I’ve heard that the Dragon of the West commanded the siege of Ba Sing Se. Is that true?”

Zuko and his Uncle both open their mouths to speak simultaneously, but Sokka interrupts, draws his boomerang. 

“Not you,” he says, pointing the boomerang at Zuko. “I want to hear from you.” And he moves the boomerang to point at Uncle.

“Yes,” says Uncle. "That is true."

“And I’ve also heard that Dragon of the West was the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation.”

“He was at one time.”

“And are you...you know... _him_?”

Here, Zuko inhales to speak again, but Uncle silences him with a hand. “I am.”

There is a silence, and Zuko purses his lips, cannot believe his uncle’s stupidity and lack of tactical planning. How could _this_ be the man that almost captured the Earth Kingdom capital? How can _this_ be the Grand Lotus of the Order?

“So,” says the Avatar after several moments. “If you were the Crown Prince, then the old Fire Lord was your father, right?”

“That is correct,” admits Uncle.

“Then the current Fire Lord is…”

“My brother.”

Another silence. Zuko surveys the people in front of him. All their bodies tense. Sokka looks angry, Katara stricken, and the Avatar tries to mask his shock.

The Avatar turns to Zuko, speaks slowly as if trying to decode some ancient Air Nation riddle. “And, if he’s your uncle,” he motions to Uncle. “Then you’re the Fire Lord’s... _son_?”

And all at once, Zuko feels all eyes on him in a way that he hasn’t in three years, since he knelt there in that arena, prostrated himself there, in front of all of the court, in front of Ozai. Of course, there must have been times in Omashu when people stared at him, particularly when they first arrived. But none spring to mind; all that time living in Omashu, he tried, tried so hard to be discrete, to be ordinary. And now, as the Avatar, Sokka, Katara, and even Uncle look at him, he feels that there are vastly more than four sets of eyes bearing into him.

When Zuko finally responds to the Avatar’s question, his voice is raspy, quieter than he intends. “Yeah.”

Now, no one looks angry. Sokka and Katara have never looked more like family than in this moment, Zuko thinks, wearing identical masks of shock—both of their jaws wide, eyebrows sitting high on their respective creased foreheads. The Avatar wears a similar expression, lips quivering as if they’ve forgotten how to form words.

But it is Uncle who speaks next, with more resolution and confidence than when he was being interrogated about himself. “My nephew may be Ozai’s son, but he left his court three years ago, of his own accord, and he convinced me to leave as well. His loyalties are not there.”

Zuko sees what Uncle is trying to do, that he is championing himself for Zuko ( _again_ ), but this time ( _as last time_ ), there is no display of gratitude. This time ( _as last time_ ), Zuko is angry, because this time if _Uncle_ (instead of, like last time, he, Zuko) had just kept his mouth shut, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

The Avatar seems to ignore Uncle’s endorsement. “Does Bumi know? Who you two are, I mean?”

“Yes,” responds Uncle.

“He said he trusts you. Why?”

Given that he seems to be in a sharing mood, for a moment, Zuko is terrified that Uncle is going to explain all of the secrets of the Order of the White Lotus. But to his relief, he merely says, “We are old friends. Though not as old as you two are.”

The Avatar breathes. “Okay. I think we..." (And Zuko is distinctly aware exactly who is and who isn't included in that _we_. It's not him, it's never him.) "...need some time to talk about this. We’ll set up two camps tonight. We’ll stay here, and you two can make camp on the other side of that ridge. And we’ll see about heading to Gaoling in the morning.”

* * *

Zuko lays on his side on the bedroll that the others had given him (“ _We’re not_ monsters,” _Sokka had said_ ), facing away from Uncle.

“You are angry with me.”

Zuko doesn’t answer right away. But Uncle persists. 

“Zuko…”

So Zuko sits up, turns toward his companion violently. “Yeah, I’m angry! Why did you have to bring up Ba Sing Se? And then, you kept answering their questions! They trusted us, and you had to go mess that up!”

“They only trusted the people they thought we were.”

“They were going to let us teach the Avatar Firebending, and that would have been enough!”

“They would have found out eventually. Better for it to be early on, from our lips.”

Zuko understands this, he _does_ , but it does nothing to quell the fire that he currently feels building in his gut. 

Uncle sees. “There is something else.”

And when Zuko opens his mouth to speak, he does not realize what he is about to say until he shouts it: “How can you just talk about Ba Sing Se like that?! Aren’t you ashamed?!”

Looking at Uncle’s face, Zuko wishes he could regret the outburst more than he does.

After several moments, and several audible breaths, the old man says, “Of course I am ashamed. There is not an hour that goes by that I do not think of it. I dream of it. When we were in the Swamp, I relived it, and I saw my Lu Ten's face on all the Earth Kingdom soldiers and civilians who perished in addition to on the Fire Nation soldiers. But…” He pauses. “Being ashamed of it is not enough. I must acknowledge it. I commanded the siege, Zuko. Countless people died on my orders. I did not realize that it was wrong for six hundred days. And it took my son’s death to show me that. And it is only in acknowledging that that I can do what needs to be done to bring balance to the world.”

Zuko says nothing.

“However,” continues Uncle. “I am ashamed of the things I did, of how I acted, perhaps even of my rank and role in the military. I am not ashamed of who I am.” Another pause. “Zuko, _you_ have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m the son of Fire Lord Ozai.”

Uncle places his hands on Zuko’s shoulders looks directly into his eyes. “You are not to blame for any of what he has done, or for any of what his father or grandfather did, or even for what _I_ have done. And you are fighting to restore balance to the world. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Once again, Zuko finds himself searching his Uncle’s face, looking for truth. 

“I am proud of you. Perhaps, one day, our Nation will be as well.”

But Zuko doesn’t want his Nation to be proud of him. He wants to have been born in Omashu to two Earth Kingdom parents—that way, people wouldn’t mistrust him as soon as they found out who his father was. That way he wouldn’t mistrust himself every time he saw his reflection and noticed all the features he had in common with Ozai.

Somehow, Uncle seems to sense this. “We cannot choose who we are born as. We can only choose what we do.”

Zuko lays down on the bedroll, says only, “Good night, Uncle.”

“Sleep well, Nephew.”

He’ll try, but he doubts he will.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Comments make me super duper happy!


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